hich he had always felt
in her. She did not, of course, care twopence for him, he decided. Well,
he would not be a hypocrite--he would not bother or embarrass her with
the expression of a tenderness neither of them felt; he would be gentle,
he would kiss her if she seemed to expect it, but he would talk brightly
and naturally of trivial things, he would make the occasion seem as
little weighted with portent as possible. There should be nothing of the
return of the master, nothing of the odious briskness of the new broom
about him at his entry. Time enough after to talk over things.... He
could spend the next day with John-James on the farm discussing
improvements, alterations. They were very behind the times down here; he
had seen farming in Somerset and Devon in his holidays that would make
them open their eyes down here. That would all break it to his mother
gently. She was getting old too--she must be quite fifty--and old people
did not like to have reforms thrust upon them. No, there should be
nothing eager, aggressive about him. He remembered stormy, excitable
scenes of his childhood and resolved they should see what the
self-control of a gentleman was like. Thus Ishmael, with intentions not
by any means, not even most largely, selfish. Yet, of all moods, the
worst to meet his mother's.

The growing interest of the drive as they neared the north-west and the
familiar landmarks of his childhood came into sight, flooded with the
June sunshine--the ruined mine-shafts staring up so starkly, the glory
of white cattle in the golden light, the first glimpse of the pale roofs
of Cloom itself, prismatic as a wood-pigeon's plumage, all these things
struck at his heart with a keener shock than did anything personal, and
made thought of his mother sink away from him. Behind the cluster of
grey buildings he saw the parti-coloured fields stretching away--green
pasture, brown arable, pale emerald of the young corn--all his. He saw
in folds of the land little copses of ash whose trunks showed pale as
ghost-trees; he saw, gleaming here and there through the gorse-bushes,
the stream that ran along the bottom of the slope below the cart-track
that led to Cloom. He saw the bleak, grey homesteads, cottages and small
farms, set here and there, as he turned in his seat to look around him.
And his heart leapt to the knowledge that all these things were his....

Annie's croaking cry, her thin arms, her quick straining of him, he all
unpre